Half-a-World-Away for the Holidays
The Muslim Sabbath is Friday, so the weekend in the UAE consisted of Thursday and Friday. As a result, we were guaranteed to have Thanksgiving off. This made it a very big deal, especially when you considered that we often had to work on Christmas, it being a Christian holiday and all.
There were enough Americans there that turkey was not at all difficult to find. I don't believe there were any fresh ones available, but I wouldn't have been that surprised if there were. The first year several of us had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the house of another first year teacher. He got offered a good job back in the States, so he left after only one year though.
The second year we went to the house of a new teacher, Dick Pecora, and his wife, who had brought their entire household furnishings over (including a minivan) in a shipping container. One of the items he brought was a propane smoker. So on Thanksgiving morning, he got up at around 6 am and put a turkey in it to smoke. That was one of the best tasting turkeys I've ever had.
I left after that year, but Harold, another teacher there, took a job at Sultan Qabos University in Muscat, Oman, which is only a few hours from Al Ain. He went to the Pecora's for Thanksgiving the next year and related an interesting story about it.
Dick was of Scottish ancestry, and St. Andrew's Day is apparently about as big of a holiday for the Scots as St. Patrick's Day is for the Irish. That year, the St. Andrew's Ball fell on the night before Thanksgiving. Harold drove out from Muscat, and went to the Ball with them. They all got home very late, so rather than getting up at 6 to put the turkey on, Dick fired up the smoker around 3 and went to bed.
As you can imagine, a Ball full of Scotsmen (and Scotswomen) also features a fair amount of alcoholic beverages, and Harold was not immune to their charms. This caused him to wake up in the middle of the night to use the facilities to relieve an aching bladder. As he passed the patio where the smoker was, he happened to notice a flame coming out of the hose that ran from the propane tank to the smoker. It was not a very large flame, but it was licking the tank! His bladder problems forgotten, he immediately woke Dick and they extinguished the flame, so no harm was done, but it made for a memorable Thanksgiving.
Anther holiday at this time of year is UAE National Day, on December 2. That is the date they obtained their independence from Great Britain, and it's as big a deal to them as the 4th of July is to us. They don't set off fireworks, but instead decorate the entire country with garish strings of lights. These lights are strung across everything that doesn't move, and some things that do.
They also celebrate New Year's Day with lights. Now, there's another day between Dec. 2 and Jan. 1 that many people also decorate things with lights. However, those people are Christians. The UAE is not a Christian country. They do not want to even give the semblance of promoting Christianity or celebrating Christian holidays, so immediately after National Day, all the lights come down. They don't just turn them off for a few weeks, they take them completely down. Then, right after Christmas, they put them all back up again in preparation for New Year's celebrations. Why they even celebrate New Year's was always somewhat of a mystery to me. They only use the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. All religious holidays (including the Prophet's birthday) are observed according to the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar one, and 11 days shorter. So we had 2 New Year's holidays over there - the Islamic one, and the Gregorian one.
As you may have heard, Ramadan is going on right now [November 2001]. It is also celebrated according to the Islamic calendar, and comes 11 days earlier every year, so when I was over there, it was in the middle of January. Their months begin with the new moon. Even though there are astronomical tables that will tell you when the new moon is thousands of years in advance, they don't rely on them. There is a committee of religious scholars or some such, whose job it is to watch for the first tiny sliver of moon that indicates the beginning of the month. If it is overcast, they will sometimes send one of them up above the clouds in a plane so he can see it.
As a result of this, the official start of any of these holidays is subject to a little bit of uncertainty. As evening approached, we would sit and wait with bated breath, wondering "does Ramadan start today, or tomorrow?" It even varied from one country to another. The UAE deferred to the moon sighting committee in Saudi Arabia, but Oman had their own, so there was sometimes a one day difference.
During Ramadan, the school day (normally 8-8) at the University was shortened so the students could get home by sunset for their prayers and feast. Thankfully, the UAE is near the tropics, so it didn't get a whole lot shorter, but not much got done anyway since the students were usually weak from hunger and couldn't think all that well. There certainly wasn't any testing for the whole month.
It was actually illegal to put or have anything in your mouth in public during daylight hours for the entire month. This included water, chewing gum, and cigarettes too, not just food. One year I saw an article in the paper about someone who was arrested for eating a sandwich in his car. It turned out he was diabetic, and needed to eat regularly to control his blood sugar. I think he got off; there were exceptions for the ill, small children, pregnant women, and travelers.
The whole fasting thing was pretty much a big joke. They would essentailly turn night into day, and vice versa. They'd get up before it got light and eat a huge meal, then go back to sleep for as long as they could. After it got dark, they'd eat another huge meal and stay up late. Many people actually gained weight during Ramadan.
We non-Muslims at the University had a tradition of holding a chili-cookoff during the holiday festival period at the end of Ramadan (I believe it was called Eid Al-Fatir). The only rule - your chili had to contain pork.
Next Installment: University Life.